IN MY ministry, every day I work with people who are challenged to deal with the existing health care system.

Too many people are just left out.

This is not an acceptable situation for our society, the most affluent in the world.

We have a historic opportunity to make fundamental change.

Now that Congress is beginning to write health care reform legislation, it is crucial that they include a strong affordability standard that would put a limit on what moderate- and middle-income people have to pay for health care.

The No. 1 reason Americans do not have health insurance is that they cannot afford it. For health reform to succeed in the eyes of everyday families like mine and those whom I serve, it needs to make good health care more affordable.

If health reform includes an individual mandate, as many believe is necessary, setting such an affordability standard becomes even more important.

It would be unfair to families, and politically disastrous for Congress, to include a mandate without strong affordability protections.

Barbara Meyers

Fremont

Time for real reform

IT DOESN’T surprise me that Propositions 1A to 1E failed.

Our elected officials promised budget reform. What voters got was a carnival shell game, containing a fast shuffle and oblique references requiring a lawyer and an accountant to fully understand.

They also failed to remove useless programs such as California’s plethora of gun controls that do nothing to control crime, imposes unconstitutional prior restraints on the free exercise of a civil right, and sop up tax dollars to maintain huge databases of law-abiding gun owners and their firearms.

There is even a statute allowing “mommy government” to tell us which pistols on the commercial market Californians are allowed to buy. Allowed? Can you believe that? How much is this costing the taxpayers to operate and maintain?

Even Proposition 1F was deficient in that it was missing key language such as, “In the event that the budget is not passed within the state constitutional deadline, legislators shall forfeit pay, perks, and per diem for each day that the budget is not passed.”

The Legislature must now do real budget reform, starting with removal of “feel-good” measures that do little more than sop up tax dollars.